The Art of Losing

Elena stood before the mirror, running fingers through her hair—thinning now, the copper dulling to ash. Forty-two felt less like a number and more like a verdict. Somewhere downstairs, her husband Marcus was probably still asleep, or pretending to be. They hadn't spoken since Thursday's argument about nothing and everything, since she'd asked him why he never looked at her anymore and he'd replied that he didn't know what she wanted from him.

She drove to the padel court where she met Lucas every Tuesday. Lucas, twenty-eight, with the easy confidence of men who haven't yet learned how badly things can break. He served hard, laughing when she missed, his shirt clinging to his frame. Elena wondered if he knew she mostly came because Marcus had taken up swimming, because Tuesday evenings were when their marriage held its breath.

"You're distracted," Lucas said, bouncing the ball.

"My goldfish died," she said, which wasn't true—it had been three years—but some lies felt more honest than explanations.

After, over salads she couldn't bring herself to eat, Lucas asked about her marriage. He did this sometimes, toeing the line she kept redrawing. His own spinach sat untouched, wilting under dressing. Elena wanted to tell him that desire wasn't a switch you flipped just because someone offered.

"It's fine," she said. "These things have seasons."

"Seasons end."

"Some come back around."

But standing in her kitchen at midnight, rinsing dishes Marcus had used for whatever he'd eaten while she pretended not to care about Lucas or padel or the way her reflection caught her off guard, she thought about how some losses accumulate like sediment. The goldfish had actually died because she'd forgotten to feed it during the weeks her mother was dying. She'd told herself it was just a fish, but some mornings she still felt its absence in the room's quiet.

Marcus came in, his hair wet from the shower. "Elena."

She kept rinsing the plate.

"I miss you," he said, which was worse than silence.

She turned off the water. In the faucet's drip-drip-drip, she heard every choice she hadn't made. "I'm still here."

"Are you?"

She wasn't sure. She only knew that loving someone was not the same as staying, that some distances opened up like wounds even when you tried to keep them closed. She dried her hands on her shirt, her hair falling forward to hide her face. Some losses were the beginning of others, and some endings were just another kind of beginning, and she didn't know anymore which was which.